Some of you may remember when Occupy Madison first decided to create the Tiny Home Village Northside police Captain Jay Lengfeld didn’t respond to attempts to communicate with us, and then blindsided us with his opposition because he thought our village didn’t belong in a residential neighborhood. He presented police calls and said that this would increase calls in the neighborhood.

NOT!

And he continued this narrative for the next 5 months as we went through the neighborhood meetings and the council approval process.

None of his predictions have come true. Not. one.

Greetings Brenda. Tonight I was in attendance at a meeting of the Emerson East Neighborhood Association. One of the members was asking about the possibility of adding street lighting in the 2000 block of East Johnson St and Johnson to Pennsylvania on Third St. There didn’t seem to be much agreement among the membership that lighting was needed. But I offered to check police calls for service data to see if there was in fact any connection of darkness in the area with increased police calls. So I did a quick check of incidents dating back ten years in the area identified at the neighborhood association meeting.

There were a total of 430 incidents in the past ten years in the area. (Incidents are anything that generates a case number in our data base) Long story short, most incidents occurred during daylight hours.

But here’s the good part. When Sanchez Motors was in business at 2050 E Johnson St there were 185 incidents attributed to that address. Since OM Village has occupied the same spot (now known as 304 N Third St), there has been only one actual incident attributed there. That of course is your self-report about the vandalism to trees. That’s right, ONE call! And OM is the victim.

I think this is a tribute to the good work you folks are doing at OM Village. You should be very proud of the work and progress you are making.

Sincerely,

PO D Dex

Hopefully Dex doesn’t get in trouble for sharing this information with us.

I want an apology from Captain Lengfeld and Chief Koval who backed him up. The blindsiding at the public meeting was just the beginning and it ended in a shouting match in his conference room where we were supposed to be talking over our plans for the village – but because he was yelling at us we never got to discuss it – he wouldn’t even let me talk. Occupy Madison has had a pretty good relationship with most police and leadership we dealt with throughout our 3 – 4 year journey to get to the village, Lengfeld was an anomaly – and of course, Chief Koval is as well. I just reviewed an email thread with Chief Koval after unanimous approval by the council of our project (where the police remained skeptical if not outright opposed) where he ended discussion with this:

First of all, congratulations for your efforts on the floor of the Common Council last night. As I stated last night, the MPD will certainly support your initiative fully as you move forward in subsequent steps of the project.

However, I could not allow your commentary on Captain Lengfeld to go unchecked without a response from me. I have worked with this man for decades and have never questioned his work ethic, his willingness to go the extra mile in constituent relations, and his fundamental sense of fairness. I respect your point-of-view that, in your opinion, Captain Lengfeld has not seen eye-to-eye with you and/or your group’s interests. I will certainly pass this information on to the Captain, expressing your concerns to date and your willingness to continue the dialogue as we all move forward. However, I must wonder aloud if your dissatisfaction rests more on the fact that you are critical of the “message” (i.e., there are some concerns with the project and these had to be brought to the Council in their deliberative process) and have chosen to take it out on the “messenger” (Captain Lengfeld)?

I want to be clear on something as I close this email. Captain Lengfeld is the Commander of the North District. He will remain in that capacity for the rest of this year and next year (2015) as well. Captain Lengfeld IS my representative (in my absence) and I support him in that role. That said, I certainly hope you can appreciate my position and deal with these realities. Copy counting the entire aldermanic assembly and sullying the reputation of a member of my team is not only disingenuous but also unproductive.

Respectfully~
Michael C. Koval, Chief of Police

Chief Koval, ask Captain Lengeld to do the right thing, show us his ethics, willingness to go the extra mile and fundamental sense of fairness and apologize. His comments were irresponsible, discriminatory and hurtful to members of the community. He wrongfully perpetuated stereotypes that have proven to be completely false. It was not professional and out of touch with reality. And he has been repeating these types of statements for years . . . this is an email I sent a friend when this was happening

“1. The City needs to reduce or freeze the number of subsidized housing units in the city. The at risk population in Madison has exceeded the ability of service provides to service them.”

or perhaps this . . .
One of the biggest crowd responses of the night was to Lengfeld‘s statement that the police thought an ordinance limiting the number of subsidized housing units in any neighborhood should be explored. He said that “would spread the problem out.”http://www.madisoncommons.org/?q=node/37

Subsidized housing = “problem”

He has a well documented and clear position about affordable housing.

Enough is enough. Apologize. And stop. Just stop repeating this bullshit.

Just one bloggers opinion. Chances are great he won’t apologize. And he won’t stop opposing affordable housing – except if it is for seniors.